Love

            As I was talking with a friend here about my internship I told him that it was hard to teach the younger children. Before I was able to explain how the children don’t pay attention or how they talk and yell when they are not supposed to or how they eat their snack during class, he told me, “You need to love the children more.” Instead of defending myself I thought about what he said.

 I realized that when I was frustrated it was mainly because I wasn’t being patient enough with the children. As I thought to myself I was reminded that these kids were six and seven years old. It was unrealistic for me to expect them to be perfectly obedient during class and to learn everything I wanted to teach them the first time that I taught it.

 I thought about what it meant to love the kids I was teaching. In summary it mainly entailed thinking of them as people rather than objects. I realized that I needed to put myself in their place and consider how I would feel, or imagine one of my nieces or nephews that is the same age as the child at hand.

As I continued teaching I made more of an effort to love the kids. When I would feel myself beginning to be frustrated I would think to myself, “Love this kid.” As I did I didn’t always think about what the child was doing wrong, but what I might change to help the child. It has been a really fun experience. I have noticed that when I focus on teaching as much material as I can, I am ineffective and the students do not retain what I am teaching. On the contrary, when I try to help each student have a positive experience, they seem to retain what I am teaching. Consciously trying to have more love for the children has helped me be happier and less stressed at work and has made the kids happier as well.

Teaching Techniques

                                    While teaching I have come to realize just how short young children’s attention spans can be and how much energy they can have. On days where I work with the six and seven year old children for hours at a time I have a really hard time maintaining their attention. Now that I write this it seems obvious that children have a hard time focusing in class for hours on end, I sometimes have trouble focusing for 50 minutes during my college classes. I have begun to try different methods of keeping my class interesting enough to maintain the attention of these children.

            One of the first things that I started to do was trying to engage all of the students in the lesson. This is harder when the class has thirty to forty students. I began calling on each student in the class in a systematic manner. For example when practicing pronunciation I would have the class repeat the word after me together and I would then call on each student individually to pronounce the word. This is only sometimes affective because the students that are not being called on become bored.

            I then tried bringing a couple of students in front of the class to practice with each other. I would chose two or three students to practice vocabulary words we had learned, or have conversations with each other. The students enjoy this, but I have the same problem of calming the students that are not currently participating in the practice.

            I have also tried incorporating songs into the learning process. We have sung simple songs to practice vocabulary and pronunciation. These seem to work well except that when the class sings together it is difficult to hear the individual students and recognize who may need additional help. I didn’t realize how hard it was to teach until I started trying to teach. It is really fun, but definitely takes practice and experience. I have become better at interacting with young children and connecting with them.

Favorites

            When I first started working the students all seemed the same to me. I didn’t see the class as individual kids but rather as a group; I would not differentiate between them. As time went on I noticed that I began to know the students individually. I began to predict who would be able to answer a certain question and who would not. I began to recognize which students were hesitant to give answers in front of the class and which ones were excited to be seen by their peers.

            As I grew to better know the children, I noticed that there were certain kids that I liked better than others. I realized that I had a few favorite kids in each class. This is not to say that I disliked the other kids; I simply did not like them as much as my favorites. I began to wonder if all teachers have favorites. I realized that they must all have students that are easier to teach than others, yet they treat them all the same.

            I decided that I had to treat all the children the same. I made a goal not to let the children discover that I have favorite students. I decided that this is the only fair way to teach. No student deserves to get less of an education because I don’t like them as much as others. This experience has helped me to have a greater respect for seasoned teachers that have no problem showing the same amount of care and interest in all of their students. 

Playground

            The playground at the elementary school is a simple courtyard of paved concrete. When I saw it, I wondered how the children could possibly amuse themselves in such a basic area. I thought about the playground at my elementary school. I played on monkey bars, swing sets, basketball courts, and tennis courts during recess. I felt bad for these kids and how bored they must be during their recess breaks.

            The first time I witnessed a recess break I was pleasantly surprised. The kids had no problem entertaining themselves. They were chasing each other, playing jump rope, playing clapping games, and singing. It seemed like a soda can of elementary school kids had been shaken and opened on the playground. They were running wild with no cares in the world. It was interesting to see the opposites that existed in the kids’ behavior in the classroom to their behavior during their breaks. During class they were calm and polite, during recess they were running wild.

            As time went on the children seemed to be getting more and more out of control. As they ran around, kids began to trip causing four or five other students to fall. I began to wonder how the teachers and I would ever calm the students and resume teaching when the time came. One teacher simply rang a bell and the teachers began instructing the students to line up. They lined up with their classes and entered the school quietly.

This experience made me wonder how I was as a child, surely one of the wild boys. I also reflected on why what I saw surprised me; was it because the kids in Madagascar are wilder than those I went to elementary school with? I don’t think so. I image that it was seeing with a new perspective that brought a new experience. I had observed these children as a teacher and not as a peer.

École Privée Primaire Maternel Mialy

            I figure it’s time to describe where I am doing my internship. It is an elementary school in the Capital named École Privée Primaire Maternel Mialy. The children with whom I have worked so far have been between 7 and 11 years old, but I think there are younger children at the school. They speak Malagasy natively and the school is conducted uniquely in French.

            The principal and my supervisor is named Melanie or Mialy in Malagasy. She has been teaching since 1977 and is very good at it. She is a loving woman; she is kind while maintaining the respect of the children. She speaks French and Malagasy; she explains that although she worked at a university in Quebec for a few years, she doesn’t speak English. It is clear that she enjoys teaching.

            The school seems very strict in comparison with my memories of elementary school, but not necessarily in a bad sense. The children are very well mannered, when I walk in they all say in unison, “Bonjour Monsieur Kevin.” When they answer a yes or no question they say, “oui monsieur Kevin” or “non monsieur Kevin.” This level of formality is really interesting and foreign to me, I am afraid of being too casual when I am teaching or helping in the classroom. On my first day I gave one student a fist bump when he provided the correct answer and all of the students began laughing. It has already been a really fun and enlightening experience. I really enjoy working at this school; I will attach more pictures in future blog posts.

Countryside

Today I drove from the Capital, Antananarivo, to a city about 3 hours to the south, Antsirabe, for the weekend. I was interested by all the small villages and groups of houses that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. These communities seem to better represent what I imaged Madagascar would be than the capital or Antsirabe. They didn’t seem to have power or running water. The people that live there rely on the land to survive.

Another thing that I noticed is that there were not any roads leading to the houses. I realized that there was no need, the people simply walked or took bikes. We would drive by people walking along the road or biking along the side. They don't depend on cars; they just transport themselves with their own energy.

I was envious of simple lifestyle these people seemed to lead. I understand that there are obvious downsides, but appreciated their connection to the land and to nature. They do not rely on all the technology I do to survive. If I don’t have my phone with me I get anxious, they don’t depend on thing I depend on. It was interesting to see the contrast between those that live in the countryside and those that live in the cities. These people are content with their lives although they don’t have all the technology that others do.